


And You Know You Can't Heal Them All

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Dance On Our Graves Verse [5]
Category: Band of Brothers, The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Minor Character Death, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-22
Updated: 2011-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-24 21:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roe doesn’t tell Babe everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And You Know You Can't Heal Them All

**AND YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T HEAL THEM ALL**  
BAND OF BROTHERS/THE PACIFIC  
Babe/Roe; Roe/Snafu; Sledge/Snafu  
 **WARNINGS** : Modern era AU; spoilers for the series; mentions of war  
 **NOTES** : Dance On Our Graves verse:  
I. [If You Wanna Leave Better Build a Rocket](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24803.html)  
II. [We Were Two Until We Melted Down](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24574.html)  
III. [We Dance On Our Graves With Our Bodies Below](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24041.html)  
IV. [If I Had a Heart I Could Love You](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/24887.html)  
V. this

  
I.

Roe doesn’t tell Babe everything. He starts with Louisiana and ends with the desert, the rough touch of Snafu and the way the sand on their hands broke both of their skins, the way they bled together and sweat together in that tent, the way they swallowed each other whole. He doesn’t mention the funeral. He doesn’t mention the day after that, when Snafu almost pulled Roe down into his arms on the bed that Roe shares with Babe, when Roe almost let him.

Sometimes he thinks he’s saving Babe from the news.

Sometimes he thinks he’s saving himself.

Most of the time he knows that he’s fucking everything up.

  
(I.)

When he was small, his grandmother had passed down the gift of healing to him. She had told him that her father had given it to her, and his mother before him, and God had given it to someone down the line, so God had given it to him, too. She had told him that his hands were blessed, and she had said it in guttural French, her thin, red lips flattened into a straight line, and his father had come into the kitchen then, where she was baking with flour and milk, and where she was holding Roe’s hands in her own, kissing one palm and then the other, kissing and kissing, and his father had rolled his eyes and told him not to be expecting God to pay the bills because Roe’s grandmother had never accepted money in exchange for any of her healing.

And Roe’s grandmother had given Roe’s father a mean look, but smiled when he turned away, throwing a dish towel over her shoulder as carefully as the salt she does for bad luck. She said not to mind him, Roe’s father she meant, as she laid the crust of a pie in a circle around a baking dish. She said not to worry, and here she started kneading the dough with her knuckles, her hands small and warm, and she kissed the top of his head when she was done, smearing flour on his cheeks in small circles from where she pressed her fingers.

And Roe could hear his father outside smoking a cigarette on the porch, singing one of those old love songs Roe knew he must have sung to his mother, when she was young and he was young, before she had died in that hospital with her swollen face and her eyes half shut and the way she would tilt her head up to kiss the soft crease of his forehead when Roe’s father would pass Roe to her when he was only a baby, when he didn’t know her like he knew her from his father’s stories, from the stories his grandmother would tell him at night when she thought he was asleep. Roe can hear his father outside, singing and singing and singing, and he thinks that maybe it’s okay if God gives him a gift that he might never use.

He thinks that maybe it’s okay if God gives him a gift that he’s supposed to love and cherish and understand, but doesn’t because it wasn’t given to him soon enough to do him any good.

But doesn’t, because it wasn’t given to him in time to save his mother.

  
II.

Babe doesn’t mention Snafu after the night Snafu calls. He doesn’t mention the way Roe had held the phone, the way he had slipped out of Babe’s arms and into the bathroom in the dark and stayed there. He doesn’t mention the French, and maybe that’s why Roe wants to hate him. Maybe that’s why Roe wants to forget everything they started, everything they wanted, everything they had dreamed about when Roe’s grandmother had given them the house for something a little less ramshackle at the edge of St. Martin Parish, somewhere where the women don’t come for miles to be touched by her hands, by Roe’s hands, crying and praying and whispering to the Good Lord.

Babe had moved in and Roe hadn’t thought twice, and they had tried being two soldiers out of their unit, out of the desert, tried building something that would last long after they paid their debts to the Army, and most of the time it worked. Babe would wake up from nightmares and Roe would kiss him until he forgot, and Roe would wake up in cold sweat with the grit of sand in his teeth, and he would slip out of bed without waking Babe and he would run or walk or sit in the dark, whichever was the easiest, until he could no longer see the burn of blood and gristle and bone on the back of his eyelids.

Roe kept working rotations at the clinics in town, and Babe found a job working construction on one of the old roads that was swallowed up by the river a few years ago, and they fight about the fact that Babe doesn’t tell any of his work friends that he’s living with Roe, and they fight about the fact that Roe works so late sometimes, climbing into bed in his dirty scrubs and kissing the back of Babe’s neck to let him know that Babe’s got to get up for work in the next fifteen minutes or he’s not getting paid that day, and they fight about the fact that they fight, and nobody tells Roe that this is how it’s supposed to be.

Nobody tells Roe that this is normal.

  
(II.)

Roe never uses his healing hands in the war.

It’s not because he never gets the chance, the boys that come to him in pieces and expect him to fix them whole, the boys who bleed red all over his uniform, the boys that look at him through dead eyes. It’s not because he wants to, the boys who say please again and again and again, their lips moving long after they’ve forgotten how to speak. It’s because he can’t.

His grandmother asks him how he kept the pain inside him as tight as he has, and Roe lies and says that it was hard. He lies and says that it was God who helped him, God who let him take it away from the soldiers who fell to the desert like the desert to the sky, and that it was God who took it away from him, as Roe reached up and up and up.

His grandmother smiles and says she’s proud, and Roe doesn’t tell her that God never once visited that fucking desert.

  
III.

Babe doesn’t ask, so maybe it’s not fair that Roe tells, anyway, but he talks about Snafu like nothing ever happened, like Snafu never hit him so hard that he couldn’t smile for weeks without feeling fire light up the side of his face, like the bruises under his eyes weren’t anything but dark and dark and dark, like Babe doesn’t look at him differently now, like he’s not doing this right, like he’s not normal. Roe talks about how they grew up and where they went to school and how the military kept them apart, but kept them close just the same, and Babe keeps his mouth tight lipped and foreign and when Roe places a hand on the back of his neck or leans in to kiss the side of his mouth, Babe lets him and doesn’t tell him to stop.

It’s that thing that’s there, though, and Roe feels it, so when Snafu calls about making the drive down to Louisiana again, Roe tells him to rent a room somewhere far enough away that maybe it won’t feel so much like cheating.

  
(III.)

His father died in a dime store robbery that was so violent it made the six o’clock news. Roe’s grandmother had gotten the call and, later, she had held Roe’s healing hands in between her own, her own healing hands, and told him that sometimes bad things happen to good people for reasons they’ll never understand. She didn’t try to explain it, she didn’t try to justify it, and Roe could see the marks in her makeup where her tears had run through, and he had tried to speak, but nothing would come out.

Sometime past midnight, after his grandmother had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room from the faint flickering of the TV, Roe had snuck out and made his way to New Orleans. Snafu had always been the one to do this, come knocking on Roe’s window in the middle of the night with cold hands gripping the sill, his face small and dirty behind the glass. Snafu had always been the one to take risks, hitchhiking his way across parish lines, usually goading Roe about letting him do it, his hands on Roe’s hands as he says, “You call and my fool ass comes,” smiling and smiling, but Roe wants to do it now, needs to do it now, his bare feet numb on the gravel of the road.

Three cars pass his outstretched thumb before a middle aged man in a pickup truck stops on the side of the road, leaning over the seat to open the passenger door for him, and he asks where Roe’s going, and Roe says somewhere close to New Orleans because he hasn’t done nearly enough walking to justify the blood on his feet yet. The man nods and drives on, and they’re quiet for a while, the man giving Roe sideways glances at every stop sign and every patch of bumpy road, until finally Roe asks him if he wants to stop somewhere, and here he unzips his jacket and lifts his shirt over his head. And the man looks at him for a beat before pulling over to the side of the road and turning off the engine, the thick brush of the swamp drawing them in.

“I don’t usually do this,” the man says, and Roe rolls his eyes because suddenly this seems more like a bad television show than real life, and he climbs out of the truck and lifts himself into the back, lying flat on the bed, his palms spread out against the cold.

“Come on,” Roe whispers to himself when the man makes no sudden movement to get out of the truck. “Come on, come on, come on.” He doesn’t know who needs this more.

Roe hears the squeak of the rusty hinge as the door opens, hears the soft crunch of the grass underneath boots, and he feels the bed of the truck push down as the man climbs up, settling himself next to Roe. He unbuttons his shirt and works his jeans down and Roe lets the man pull down his pajama pants and lets him pull down his underwear and lets him place his mouth on him, and he almost makes it before he starts crying, one hand over his eyes and the other flexing open and closed in the man’s hair. He almost makes it, and the man is pulsing his tongue over and over Roe’s skin, and Roe stops thinking and stops breathing and stops being and for one amazing moment everything is perfect.

Afterwards, the man says thank you and hands him a fifty dollar bill and drops him off two miles outside of New Orleans. Roe gives the money to Snafu and doesn’t tell him where it came from, and Snafu lets him sleep in his bed with his dirty feet and doesn’t even try to kiss him.

  
IV.

Snafu rents a hotel near one of the hospitals Roe studied at, and Roe walks up to the room with his hoodie pulled close over his scrubs, his head down. He has an hour before his second shift starts and he needs to get this over with before he loses his nerve, but Snafu opens the door and tugs him inside and this feels like the biggest betrayal Roe has ever committed.

“I’m not fucking you,” Snafu says, and apparently Roe’s the coward here.

“Okay,” Roe says, and sits down on the bed, and his hoodie is hanging open, and Snafu visibly swallows before he moves himself to sit down in the chair across from Roe.

“I promised Sledge.” Snafu picks at his fingernails for a minute, not looking Roe in the eye, even when Roe raises an eyebrow.

“You promised him you wouldn’t fuck me?” Roe says, and it comes out of his mouth slow, like Snafu’s too stupid to understand. “How’s that working out for you?”

Snafu doesn’t say anything for one minute, two minutes, until he sets his jaw and tells Roe to go fuck himself, and Roe laughs, and it’s easier now, it’s familiar. “How’s Babe?”

Roe winces, and Snafu catches it just as quickly as it disappears. “He’s fine,” Roe says, and Snafu doesn’t say anything. “He doesn’t know I’m here, actually.”

“This isn’t wrong,” Snafu says, and he holds out his hands, but Roe still feels like he shouldn’t be here, not now, not ever, and this justification is worse than it feeling wrong, worse than it feeling like Roe’s committed a crime.

Snafu lifts himself out of the chair and sits down on the bed beside Roe, and their hands find each other, and maybe they have nothing to do with it. “This isn’t wrong,” Snafu whispers again.

“It isn’t right, either,” Roe says, and Snafu leans over to kiss him on the corner of his mouth.

  
(IV.)

There was a woman who died underneath his palms a year after his father was killed. Her husband had watched as he had placed his hands flat out over her stomach, his fingertips spread as wide as they could go, his palms pressing deep into her skin. He didn’t have big hands yet like his father, but they healed just the same, and Roe’s grandmother had prayed over her body in words Roe was never taught, and the woman had danced and shook and cried out in a language he didn’t know, and the husband had moved forward to catch her, and Roe’s fingers had left her skin.

His grandmother had told him that they buried her somewhere close to the water, watched as the waves lapped over her grave again and again and again, watched as she was washed away. His grandmother had told them that it was her time, that it was God’s time, but Roe knew he had killed her just like he had killed his father. Just like he had killed his mother.

And his hands weren’t strong enough to hold this many deaths.

  
V.

They don’t touch, actually.

Snafu kisses him and then he moves away, and it’s like high school all over again, and Roe forgets what Snafu’s skin feels like, what Snafu’s skin tastes like, and if Snafu remembers Roe’s, he doesn’t say anything. They don’t mention Babe and they don’t mention Sledge, and Snafu lays down on the bed next to Roe and doesn’t breathe, and it’s nice to just be there and not have to think, and sometime between Snafu telling him about the way Mobile lights up in the winter, the way the trees brim full of leaves in the summer, Roe falls asleep and misses his shift at the hospital.

And when he wakes up, Snafu is gone.

There’s a note written on the back of a paper bag lying next to him, and Roe blinks at it a few times before he can read it, and even then all it says is I’M SORRY.

  
(V.)

Snafu comes to him in bruises and blood and Roe cleans him up and gives him butterfly stitches and pressed clothes and Snafu eats his grandmother’s home cooking and sits in his father’s chair in the kitchen and talks in loud, separate syllables and smiles and smiles and smiles. He doesn’t cry. His father was raised like his father before him, and Snafu knows this and Roe knows this, and Louisiana knows this, how her children are raised coiled tight and hard, ready to strike.

Roe’s father never touched him like Snafu’s father does, and maybe that’s why he was shot in the candy aisle of a dime store and left for dead.

Snafu comes to him and they wait until Roe’s grandmother falls asleep in the easy chair in the living room, a pile of yarn stitched and unstitched in her lap, and Snafu steals one of the bikes collapsed outside Roe’s neighbor’s house and they ride until their lungs feel like fire, Roe’s arms gripping around Snafu’s waist. Snafu pulls a flask out of his hoodie and they take turns sipping the whiskey inside, and Snafu leads him to a playground by one of the old schools, the darkened swings and abandoned slide and the rhythmic sway of the teeter totter under the stars.

“Come on,” Snafu says, and pulls Roe up the stairs of the slide, sitting under the wooden roof with his legs hanging over the side. Roe curls beside him and it’s cramped in the small space in the dark, but it’s quiet and it’s perfect.

Snafu never thanks him for all the things he does, but when he slips his cold hands under the warmth of Roe’s shirt, pushing him to lie down on the uneven wood, kissing the exposed inch of skin between Roe’s shirt and Roe’s pants, Roe says you’re welcome anyway.

  
VI.

Babe smiles like nothing’s wrong when Roe comes home, dropping his keys on the kitchen counter and running a hand over the back of his neck. “Hey,” Babe says, and Roe lifts one corner of his mouth and it feels forced and nothing was supposed to be like this.

He’s careful not to lean in when Babe kisses him on the cheek, careful not to slide his fingers up Babe’s fingers, and Babe makes a face and asks him what’s wrong and Roe says, “I’m sorry, Edward,” and it’s eerily similar to Snafu’s own apology, Snafu’s first apology, written in big black letters while Roe slept, but Roe’s not as afraid as Snafu was, not anymore.

“For what?” Babe asks, puzzled, and he runs a hand up to Roe’s shoulder, and it’s this and it’s now and it’s him and it’s Babe and there’s nothing to stop him from saying this.

“For sleeping with Merriell.” And Babe still looks confused, so Roe says, “The day of the funeral.”

And Babe doesn’t say anything for the longest time, looking at Roe with Roe looking at him, and it’s nothing and it’s everything, and Babe finally says, “Gene,” and it’s the worst thing that Roe’s ever heard.

“I’m sorry,” Roe says again, but Babe doesn’t hear it before the door closes behind him.

  
(VI.)

The Army calls him for the same reason his grandmother had laid her hands on him when he was young.

He fails them, too.

  
VII.

Babe doesn’t come home that night.

He doesn’t come home the night after that, either.

  
(VII.)

He kills three men in his first tour. They wear guns like soldiers, but none of them are older than he is, none of them are stronger or faster or wiser, and he kills because he has to, but none of this was what he wanted to do here in this place, in the desert. He wanted to help and he wanted to save, but he hurts more than anything and nothing about this is fair. Nothing about this is right.

It is the war and it isn’t the war.

There are boys who die in his arms, but the Army trains him to forget, and he can, so he does, and the blood on his hands never lasts as long as it should, and Snafu had asked about it once, at home, back before Roe had ever met Edward Heffron, back before Roe was selfish and stupid and cruel, and Roe had told him that boys died before you could ever learn their names, because that was how it was, because that was how it would stay.

Snafu has asked him if he had ever lost someone he could have saved, and Roe had said, “No,” but it had been the biggest lie that he had ever told.

It is the war and it isn’t the war.

  
VIII.

“It was a mistake,” he tells Babe’s voicemail. “It was an accident.”

He mentions the way that Snafu had led him to the bathroom and the way that Snafu had kissed him and the way that he had thought of Babe, and he talks for six minutes before he starts crying, and even then it’s flush against the bathroom sink where he has already thrown up twice, where he has started drinking the old whiskey Snafu’s father had given him when he had come back from his second tour, started but couldn’t finish on an empty stomach, and he cries and cries and Babe doesn’t answer his phone even once.

He tells him about the day after that, when Snafu had hit Roe for not kissing him, when everything had gotten out of control, when he almost lost Snafu, almost lost Babe, but it’s not enough, it won’t ever be enough, so he talks about that first day that he had met Babe, the first day in the hospital when Babe had lost John Julian, and here he is crying into the phone, and he’s saying how Babe has always been the bravest one between them. Babe has always been the bigger man and Babe has always been exactly what he needed.

Roe says, “I love you,” but it’s not enough.

  
(VIII.)

There was a boy who was dying in the desert.

  
IX.

Babe comes home to change clothes and shower and Roe wakes up only because he had fallen asleep on the couch with half a bottle of whiskey in his lap, and he hears Babe’s heavy-footed walk up to the front door before he hears the key turning in the lock, and he sits up and his head is pounding and Babe’s looking at him like maybe he wants to say something about how awful he looks, but he sighs loudly through his nostrils instead.

“Gene,” he says, and Roe has never heard that tone before, so he doesn’t say anything.

Babe sits on the couch next to him, and it’s weird being this close and not being close at all, so Roe blinks back tears and Babe is careful not to touch him and they sit like this for one, two minutes, before Roe says, “I’m pretty sure I got fired.”

And Babe laughs even though he shouldn’t, and Roe moves his lips into something close to a smile, and it’s familiar for a minute. “You deserve it,” Babe says, even though Roe’s pretty sure he doesn’t mean it, and Babe moves his hand like he wants to touch Roe’s hand but he’s not too sure, so Roe slides his hand underneath Babe’s and they’re both warm and there’s a breeze kicking up through the open door, and Babe turns his face away like maybe he’s not sure what he’s doing, and Roe doesn’t know what to say to make this all better.

“I’ll never understand you two, will I?” Babe whispers, and Roe looks away.

“Probably not,” he says, and his voice is sharp and hard and the way the words come out of his mouth remind him of his father, and nothing will ever the same again.

Babe pulls on Roe’s hand and Roe turns back to look at him again and it seems like Babe is staring right through him and maybe he is, maybe he can see all the parts of him, all the parts of the sinner inside, and Babe tugs on his hand, hard this time, and says, “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again.”

And Roe always keeps his promises.

  
(IX.)

There was a boy who was dying in the desert.

  
X.

There was a boy who died in the desert.

  
(X.)

There was a boy who was dying in the desert.

And Roe never got there in time.


End file.
